Chapter 6 : Vanessa
1602 Words
REMI'S POV
Wednesday morning arrived cold and clear, the kind of autumn morning that made the city look like it was trying harder than usual.
I was at my desk by seven-forty, which was early enough that the floor was quiet — just the ambient sounds of the building, the distant city, the hum of servers somewhere below. I liked these twenty minutes before the floor came alive. It was the only part of the day when I could sit at my desk with my ginger tea and my crackers and my open research files and feel like I had the situation under some kind of control.
I was deep in Meridian Tech's Q2 earnings report when the elevator dinged.
The woman who walked off it was not Margaret. She was tall, with the dark, polished look of someone who'd been carefully assembled to be impressive — brunette hair that moved like it had been styled by someone who charged by the hour, a suit that fit in the particular way that meant it was bespoke. She was carrying a Prada bag and moving through the space with the casual ownership of someone who'd been here before.
She was already at my desk before I'd fully registered she was heading for it.
"Can I help you?" I said.
She looked up from the files she'd already started leafing through — my files, my organized inbox — and smiled with all her teeth. "You must be Remi. I'm Vanessa Blackwood." A theatrical pause, perfectly calibrated. "Dax's — friend."
The pause made the word do something it shouldn't have been able to do.
"Nice to meet you." I kept my voice pleasant. This was a performance, and the audience was me.
Before I could respond, the elevator dinged again. Margaret emerged from the break room hallway, coffee in hand, and went absolutely still when she saw who was standing at my desk.
"Miss Blackwood." Her voice dropped to the temperature of a server room. "What a surprise."
"Margaret." Vanessa stood, smoothing her skirt with the same practiced ease she did everything. "Still here, I see. I thought you'd have retired by now."
"Not quite." Margaret's smile was professional and entirely deadly. "Does Mr. Wolfe know you're here?"
"Not yet. I wanted to surprise him." She picked up her Prada bag from my desk — she'd set it on my desk — and glanced at me. "Remi, right? Dax mentioned he'd hired someone new. Another assistant."
The way she said another turned me into a category rather than a person.
"I started last week," I said.
"Last week." She laughed. Light, musical, designed to sound spontaneous. "Well, don't get too comfortable. Dax goes through assistants the way some people go through coffee subscriptions. There was Sarah before you — she lasted three weeks. Jennifer before that, two or three, I lose track. And before her..." She trailed off, letting the implication accumulate.
"Miss Blackwood," Margaret said, in a tone that brooked nothing. "I'm sure you have somewhere to be."
"Actually, I'm here to see Dax. Is he in yet?"
The elevator behind us dinged.
Dax stepped off it mid-call, speaking rapid Japanese, his attention entirely on the conversation. He moved through the lobby area without slowing, and he was almost to his office door before he registered that something was different about the configuration of people standing near reception.
He stopped.
His eyes found Vanessa. His expression went from focused to completely, utterly blank in the time it took to take a breath.
He ended the call.
"Vanessa."
"Dax!" She moved toward him with the energy of someone who'd been told don't but had decided to anyway. "I was in the neighborhood and I thought —"
"No." One word. Flat as pavement. She stopped as effectively as if he'd held up a wall between them. "We discussed this. You don't come to my office without an invitation."
"I just wanted to —"
"Margaret." He didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to. "Call security."
Vanessa's composure cracked — just at the surface, just enough to let something uglier through. "That's not necessary. I was leaving."
She turned toward me, and whatever was under the surface moved through her eyes when they landed on mine. "Lovely to meet you, Remi." She smiled. "I'm sure we'll see each other again."
"No," Dax said, still in the same flat tone. "You won't. And Vanessa — if you come back to this building, I'll have a restraining order filed. Her father's city council seat is noted. My lawyers are more expensive."
Vanessa's face went from polished to pale. She stared at him for a moment — the particular stare of someone who'd run this scenario through their head and expected a different outcome. Then she picked up her bag and walked to the elevator with the careful dignity of someone keeping themselves together through sheer force of practiced performance.
At the elevator, she turned.
"You're temporary," she said. Looking directly at me. "They always are."
The doors closed.
The floor was very quiet.
I let out a slow breath and didn't let myself look at anything for a moment — not at Dax, not at the elevator, just at the surface of my desk where her bag had been sitting on my organized files.
"What in the world," I said quietly, "was that."
"A cautionary tale," Margaret said, already returning to her desk, "about what happens when people don't understand that no is a complete sentence."
"How long has she been doing this?"
"She's shown up four times since he ended things. Each time she's been removed." Margaret set her coffee down. "She and Dax dated briefly, about a year ago. He ended it. She decided it wasn't over."
"And security each time?"
"Each time." She glanced at his closed door. "You should go in. He's going to want a word."
I knocked at exactly five minutes, because I'd learned that five minutes meant five minutes.
"Come in."
He was at the window. He did that — went to the window when he was thinking something through. Hands in his pockets, shoulders set, the particular stillness that meant the calculation was running.
He didn't turn right away.
"I apologize for that." His voice was level. "It won't happen again."
"It's fine —"
"It's not." He turned, and his face had that hardened quality that appeared when something had crossed a line he'd already drawn clearly. "Vanessa Blackwood is not stable. If she approaches you again — here, outside, anywhere — you don't engage. You call security and you move away from her. That's not optional."
"Understood."
"The last assistant she fixated on quit inside of a week. I won't have that happen again."
"I'm not going to quit over someone I've met once."
He looked at me steadily. "She texted the last one forty-seven times in three days."
"I'll block the number."
"You've already received a text from her."
I stared at him. "How did you —"
"I had your work phone number flagged when I realized she might have accessed the assistant contact list." His voice was completely matter-of-fact. "The text was traced. Did you respond?"
"No. I deleted it."
"Block the number. If you receive any contact from her on your personal number, I want to know immediately." He crossed to his desk and sat down, all business again, the window conversation apparently finished. "I need you to research three companies. Meridian Tech, Blackstone Holdings, and Westfield Development. Comprehensive analysis — financial stability, leadership structure, potential weaknesses. I'm considering acquisitions."
He slid a folder across the desk. It was, if anything, even thicker than the Sterling background folder had been.
"Twenty pages total. Due Friday."
Twenty pages. Four days. Alongside everything else on my desk.
"Any particular priority order?"
"Meridian first. They're the immediate target." He turned to his monitor — the particular turn that meant this conversation was done. "Background reading's in the folder. Start with their Q3 report, it's flagged."
I took the folder. My arms registered the weight.
"Anything else?"
"Yes." He looked up from his monitor. "Marcus mentioned you looked unwell at the meeting yesterday. When you were alone in the conference room."
My heart stopped. "I'm fine. I just hadn't —"
"Eaten. I know." His voice was flat. "The ginger crackers in your desk drawer. The tea you make in the break room at precisely eight-fifteen every morning." He held my gaze. "I'm not going to speculate about what it means. I'm going to tell you that whatever is going on, I need you functional. So eat properly. Sleep properly. And if something is affecting your ability to work, you tell me."
The sentence was not kind. It was not warm. It was the most direct, unromantic possible version of concern, stripped of everything except the operational requirement.
And somehow that made my throat tighten more than kindness would have.
"I will," I said.
"Good. That's all."
I walked out, sat at my desk, stared at the Meridian Tech folder for a moment, and then opened it and started reading.
My phone buzzed. An unknown number. A text: You can't trust him. I know him better than you ever will. Meet me. — V.
I blocked the number, opened a new document, and typed: Vanessa Blackwood — second contact, personal number. Text received 9:47 AM. Blocked. No response sent.
I forwarded it to Dax's email, subject line: FYI.
His reply came in forty seconds: Noted. Thank you.
I put my phone face-down and got back to work.
- Writer
